#149: The Baton Rouge Cannibal (Serial Killer Sean Gillis)
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Welcome to this week's main episode of Rotten Mango. I'm your host, Stephanie Su. Let's talk about Sean. Sean hopped into his car to go pick up his girlfriend. This is like the happiest time of the day. He was always so happy when he was going to go see her. Even though they lived together, they cuddled together, they cooked dinners together, he just could not get enough of his girlfriend. Oh, there she is. He rolled down his window. Oh, hey.

babe i missed you how was work good he leans in for a kiss and he couldn't help but pull away with this big old grin on his face he's thinking to himself i wonder if she knows i wonder if she can taste it i can i can still taste the human flesh lingering in my mouth

As always, full show notes are available at RottenMangoPodcast.com. But have you gone and picked up a copy of the book called Dismembered? Okay, I highly recommend it. It sounds sick and twisted, and it is, but it is a really well-written book on this case. The authors did extensive research. They spent a lot of time, not just putting the book together, but also on the visualization.

on the victims lives and trying to showcase who they were as people. It's written by the two authors Susan D. Mustafa who also happens to have a really good book on the Zodiac Killer by the way and Sue Israel. I don't know how they did it. I don't know how they went through all the court documents, all the interviews, the transcripts because this case is so gruesome and this book is super detailed. So if you're interested in this case at all I highly highly recommend this book. So let's get into the story.

Yvonne was a very religious girl. Her brother was a priest and her sister was a nun. So she's like, okay, I'm probably going to end up going down this path too. But somehow she ends up in Louisiana State University instead. She wasn't mad about it though. Especially when a nice looking college boy named Norman took her on a date. On the very first date ever, he sat down. He announced her. I will be marrying you one day.

Now, this might send some girls out there running for the hills, ripping their hair out. I mean, it's a little much for the first date, no? But for someone like Yvonne, she was immediately smitten. She knew Norman wasn't in love with her. I mean, this is their first date, for crying out loud. But the fact that he even said that, the fact that he even stated that, felt like he was a man of action. His intentions were pure. He knew what he wanted and he was going to go after it.

It didn't hurt that he was also super witty, super funny and hot. Okay. And treated her like a princess at the end of the day. Almost a year into their first date. Like, oh, wait, that's a year long first date. Almost a year after their first date, Norman kept his word and married Yvonne. So during their whole wedding, she's described to have been starry eyed. Oh, she was happy. This was her fairy tale and she was just living in it. We're all just living in Yvonne's story. But was Norman Prince Charming?

Let's investigate. Norman had grown up in New Orleans, and his parents were divorced when he was just four years old. His dad was a bit of an alcoholic, I'm going to be honest with you. And his mom, well, she just was not a pleasant person to be around. I don't know how else to put it. It's not like, you know, she didn't beat him. She didn't hurt him, but...

Wow. She was just a very negative Nancy. Norman really did not like his mom. The rest of his childhood seemed relatively normal. That is till he graduated high school. He graduates high school and he enlists in the army. Now, listen, this guy is obsessed with drinking from the get-go. He would sneak out of the army base, get drunk, wander around the streets of Honolulu, drunk and naked. He was held at two different mental institutions to be analyzed because they're like, this is not normal behavior.

It was after the second time that the army was like, maybe we shouldn't be putting you in a tank with weapons. Maybe, maybe not. That's that seems like a weird idea. So let's just discharge you. So he gets out of the army and now he's like, what do I do with my life?

He joins Louisiana State University and his grades were horrendous. I don't even know what to say. It was bad. I think his GPA was like a negative. Is that even possible? But he made it happen. But his social life, prosperous, thriving. This guy was making a ton of friends and that's how he met Yvonne. And immediately he's like, this is the one for me. Not because she was beautiful, which she was, you know, not because of all of these things, but this...

This was, you know, Norman was trying to be practical at this point. He had just almost ruined his life. He wanted a chance at stability. This was his chance. Yvonne was the epitome of stable. She comes from a religious background.

very traditional really conservative just a family woman like she's the type of girl that has been waiting since day one to be a wife and he's like this is perfect and he's not gonna risk it all by telling yvonne the truth you know what's he gonna say hey i love you i know we just met like two freaking minutes ago but i've got problems with drinking i'm pretty mentally unstable i have problems with coping during hard situations i'll probably

Disclaimer. The questioning his sexuality and individuality and identity part, that's not a mental problem. But other than that, I do want to say that this guy was very, very unstable. Like, really unhinged. Now, he's not a bad guy, though.

He's not horrible. He really did love Yvonne, or at least he tried to. He wanted her to be happy too. He hated hurting her, upsetting her. I mean, I think that's why he kept so many secrets from her. They end up buying this house together and they start working. Now, Yvonne being super religious, she felt like Norman was not settling into the role of the husband.

She expected him to be the one bringing in the dough. She would be at home, you know, being cute, being a housewife. And the more frustrated she got with his performance, the more he started acting out.

He started drinking late. Sometimes he just stopped coming back home in general. Yvonne really started to question her life choices. Like, oh my God, did I pick the wrong guy? I mean, I'm Catholic. I can't even get a divorce now. It's too late. He just isn't the same anymore. Whenever he's drunk, he doesn't even laugh. He doesn't even try to have fun with me, which is the whole reason that I fell in love with this guy to begin with. He's just so mean. He's so demanding. And then Yvonne fell pregnant.

With their firstborn child, Sean Vincent Gillis. This is the guy that we're going to be talking about today. Listen, Norman only got worse with the birth of his son. The pressure was just too much. Like he said, the house, the kid, the paying, the bills, the mortgage, the diapers, the food, the diaper changes. I mean, Yvonne always wanted to do everything as a family unit. Just everything together. I never had time to myself ever. It was just all too much.

So he lost his job and he resorted to becoming a door-to-door encyclopedia salesman. Which, quick question, this is so off topic, but is that why there's so many freaking encyclopedias at the thrift store? Because people were going around forcing them down homeowners' throats? I feel like that's gotta be. Why? I mean, who owns that many encyclopedias? I need to know. So anyway...

He's not bringing in a lot of money. The demand for encyclopedias was down. The market was at a decline. He wasn't bringing enough money for the family. Yvonne was struggling. She was working, taking care of the kid, but she stuck it out. She prayed. She prayed on it. She said, my husband's going to change. I know that he just has to remember the good old days. I think that it's

It's me too, you know, we're all part of the reason. He's drinking because he's not happy. So I just need to make him happy and then the problem will... Then it all went to hell. When Sean was about one years old, Norman comes home with a gun. And he walks up to Sean with a gun in his shaky hand and he points it. And he says, I'll shoot him and I'll kill you too, Yvonne. I'm serious, Yvonne, I'll kill him. I'll kill our son.

And Yvonne's standing there, seeing this unfold, and she just felt her mother instinct flaring. She screamed, oh hell no you won't. She jumped, ran up to Norman, tackled him to the ground, wrestled the gun out from him, fought with all her strength. He was not going to kill her baby, not on her watch.

She wrestled the gun away from his hands. She runs into the bathroom, finds the window, hurls herself out of it like face first, runs to the neighbor's house to get help. And once Norman was dragged out of the house by his dad, which like I know, oddly, she didn't call the police. She just called Norman Sr. to come get his son. She was like, you need to get your son. He's unhinged.

She rushed back into the house, held on to her baby Sean, and she rocked him. She looked at him with like tears streaming down her face and she said, I promise, I promise I will never ever let anything bad happen to you ever again. Norman was taken to a psychiatric ward and when he was finally released, he called Yvonne. Yvonne.

I'm leaving. I just don't want to hurt you or Sean. And I think it's just best if I go. And she agreed. I mean, she was heartbroken. She was like the type of person that believed marriage meant forever through good and bad, thick and thin. Right. But now it's really over. How how the heck is she going to raise this baby as a single mom? She already promised this baby that she would do everything to protect him. So that's what she's going to have to do. For 17 years, Yvonne never heard from Norman again or got any sort of support from him.

So Yvonne starts raising Sean by herself. And she was a really good mom. Okay, she was a really good mom in the sense that she was too good of a mom. Okay. Which could mean that she's not a good mom at all. You know when you're so good of a parent that you don't want your kid to have any hardship or really face any problems on their own. And technically that'd be a really good parent, but you're essentially making your kid incompetent.

Right, so it's not good. Yeah, so... Yeah, exactly. It was like a... Overbearing. Exactly. She raised Sean by herself and she called him her blue-eyed little boy, her sweet little angel. No matter how tired Yvonne was, she read to him every single night. Sometimes she read him children's books like you normally would.

But a lot of the times, she thought advanced books would make Sean smarter. So she started reading him the likes of Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, William Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe to this little boy. And she's so happy. She genuinely thought that he was a genius. Her dreams were crushed one day when the teachers at the school sat her down and said, Oh, you think your son's a genius?

Okay, he's definitely not a genius. We would say he's average at best. Average is great. He's right in the middle of the spectrum. Perfect. Yvonne, unfortunately, was one of those moms that still believed that he was smarter than the rest. She would say, you know, he's smart in a way that schools just, they don't measure. The teachers, they just don't realize how smart he is. But I do. And that's all that matters. Says every mom. Exactly.

Like my niece will sit down without hurting herself. And my sister's like, did you guys see that? She's so smart. I'm like, oh, okay. That's where we're going. So Sean grew up without a dad, but he had a Norman senior in his life. So he had his grandpa from his dad's side. Yvonne never cut him off from his dad's side of the family, which they really respected her for that.

So even though she worked all the time, Sean never lacked attention. She even scraped together enough money for a down payment on a house, a three-bedroom, two-bathroom house with a big backyard. And it was beautiful. Sean was 10 at this point, which is saying a lot because his neighbors were terrified of him. Yeah, a 10-year-old boy. They said the little 10-year-old boy gave them the heebie-jeebies.

What does that mean? Like a... Like a creepy... Like the heebie-jeebies. Like you're giving me the... Like the shivers because you're so creepy and weird. Yeah, this 10-year-old gave full-grown adults the heebie-jeebies. They whispered about him. You know, it's just...

I can't be the only one, but there's something strange about that kid, right? I don't know how to put my finger on it, but my son was playing Dungeons and Dragons with him. And I just, every time I look into his eyes, I get the chills. He's a creepy kid. Oh my God. I know exactly what you're talking about. My daughter, for some reason, with no, she couldn't even tell me why. She's terrified of him.

He throws me off. Yvonne would never understand, though. She thought her son was perfectly normal. She would say things like, well, he likes Star Trek and snakes, just like every other boy. So... Snakes? Snakes, yeah. And he loves to read. He's normal and he's a genius. All in one.

As a teenager, Sean wanted to maintain this image that he had in his sweet mother's eyes. So he hid everything from her. And he was good at it. He even starts dabbling and smoking weed, going to like these devil worship spots to investigate devil worshipers, which he really never found any devil worshipers. It's just like random people getting together in the field. And he was like, devil worshipers. The neighbor saw a side of Sean that Yvonne never saw. And I don't know why. Maybe she was working at night. But they said...

One of them said, I knew something was wrong with him. One night, about three in the morning, I wake up to this loud noise coming from the yard. It's like a boom, boom. And I'm like, what is that? So I look out the window and Sean is there in the front yard, beating, beating.

beaning on some garbage cans like a wild maniac. I've never seen anything like it before. You would think that he's in a bar fight with a garbage can, kicking it, banging it, throwing it in the air, slamming it onto the ground, roundhouse kicking it, grabbing numchucks, just, oh, it was, he was filming a whole Marvel fight sequence with an inanimate object as a teenager. So another neighbor came out and said, hey, what's the matter? Are you okay?

You and the trash got beef? What's going on? I'm just so frustrated. I'm freaking frustrated. I just don't know why I don't have a girlfriend. It just doesn't make sense and I don't get it. The neighbors were so freaked out. Yeah, I'm gonna move. Yeah, I could not...

Can you imagine? They just slowly hithered back into their little houses, closed the blinds, locked the doors, got some security cameras installed because they were terrified. What kind of teenager does this?

And when Sean was 17, Norman Sr. died. So his grandpa died. And this would be the first time that Yvonne would reach out to Norman Jr. to let him know. Like she was the one that let him know, hey, your dad is dead. So this is the first time in 17 years that Norman finally gets to meet his son. And it's at his own father's funeral.

And Norman was heartbroken. He felt the guilt of abandoning his child. He just wanted to mend his relationship with Sean. He starts taking Sean to go horseback riding, to amusement parks, whatever he wanted. He did it with Sean. They somewhat were forming this relationship and it was nice. But of course, Norman forked it up. He got drunk and he started hallucinating. He was immediately placed back into a mental institution for intensive care. And from there, he called his son.

Sean, could you go to the hotel room that I was renting? Get my stuff. I just don't want to get it stolen while I'm in here. And can you keep it safe for me? Oh, and I have a rental car there that needs to be returned. Can you promise you'll do this? Sean's like, sure. He decides to make a little trip out of it. And he takes his two friends down to the French Quarter of New Orleans. And they start walking through the hotel. In the room, they start packing up Norman's things. And one of the boys goes...

Oh my God, what is that? And he points at the nightstand. Sean walks closer and it's pictures. Pictures of men in various sexual positions.

Now, the kids were raging homophobes, by the way. They all said they felt repulsed and revolted and they just they couldn't believe it. It was disgusting for them, I guess. Sean tried to play it cool and shook it off, but everybody knew that he was super upset. On the way home, he wouldn't even talk to his friends. He didn't know what he was more mortified at. The fact that his friends had seen those pictures or the fact that his dad was gay. That's what he said. He didn't know.

Now, eventually, Norman got out of the hospital and he tried to call his family, but they did not want anything to do with him after this. And that was the end of any father-son relationship.

so sean was essentially a mama's boy through and through not that he listened to his mom but he loved mooching off of his mom he loved being that perfect little angel for his mom and made sure that he never disappointed her even though he was like living a completely different life behind her back you know during college days he stayed with her never got a job relied solely on her income i mean some people do that that's fine he's focused on studying i guess if she can make it work whatever the

The fact is he did that for the next 10 years. He just never left, never got a job. He would just sit at home on his computer all day. He had no drive and Yvonne had no guts to kick him out.

That is until she was offered the broadcast manager position on her job. But the only caveat is that she would have to relocate to Atlanta, Georgia. I mean, she had to take the job. This was the next step in her career. This this is what she wanted. And Sean, I mean, he's a full grown boy now. So she asks him, do you want to come to Atlanta, Georgia with me? And he's like, no, no, no, I don't really want to go, which is kind of crazy because he's not paying rent or utilities or anything like you live off your mom. So what I'm implying here is do you really even have a choice?

But he's sitting there like, nah, I think I'm just going to stay here. Yvonne's like, well, I guess that's fine. Okay, sweetie, how about I pay the mortgage on the house and you just cover the utilities every month, yeah?

Yeah, yeah, don't worry about it, mom. And you know where this story goes. Sean was alone, alone for the first time ever. And he had no foundation of work ethic, discipline, self-control, nothing. So all he did all day, every day was to discover the most versatile corner of the internet, the endless corner of the internet. No, it's not the podcast. No, it's not my YouTube videos. It's porn.

Just so many porn videos out there. And he was watching every single one of them. He wanted to literally consume every bit of porn and pictures that was available. It was really bad.

So that year, a massive hurricane had swept through the area of Baton Rouge, which led to flooding in a lot of people's homes, including Sean's house. And he just got super lucky that there were only a few inches of water in his house. Some people had their houses completely destroyed. So he's lucky, right? But he's too busy masturbating to do anything about it. Like he's

He just put down some newspaper on the ground to soak up the water. And that was it. He let his mom's stuff, including her books, just slowly start floating around the house. And he kept thinking to himself, you know what? I'll do it later. But he never did because he was too busy ruining every pair of good socks he owns. Yeah, he was a sock person and a shirt person.

why why not a tissue person yeah he would use his own shirts and socks when his friends came over he would just smile and say oh excuse the mess and they would all sit around and get high i guess none of them minded the moldy smell none of them yvonne would have been terrified if she had found the truth but good thing she had no idea sean would call her and say oh my god mom i'm doing great actually beyond great i'm really making a man out of myself you know

His neighbors didn't think so. They said that he only got creepier after his mom left. He started peeping into neighbors' windows, which got him arrested for all of a few hours. That's it. Like, they put him in jail for a few hours, and they were like, okay, well, don't do it again. Get out of here. Skedaddle. One neighbor reported that he would just howl at the moon and curse his mother for leaving. Listen, I don't know if this is some sort of weird vampire dies, Wattpad stuff that's going on, or if by howling, the neighbor meant he was just screaming in the house.

But what I can get from this is that he definitely was doing the most. Like, I can assure you that much. I mean, it sounds like he could be a guy who howls at the moon. Exactly, yeah. Just, like, holding his sock by the entryway and just slinging it around. It's disgusting.

Inside his house, it eventually got so messy that he only had this tiny little pathway that he could use to walk to the kitchen and the rest of the house. There was clutter everywhere. Just shirts with semen everywhere. And Sean had this rage burning inside of him. A rage so strong that he couldn't even pick up a broom to clean. He felt like he deserved a girlfriend, you know?

And he didn't know why he didn't have one. Sure, he owns no good socks and he smells perpetually of mold, but why wouldn't a woman want a fine specimen like him? So he starts walking around, talking to his fellow female friends, and he's like, come on, please, just set me up. Like, you've got to know somebody. Please, just come up for me. One of his friends named Sharon said,

Okay, fine. A friend of mine, her name is Terry. She works at the convenience store in town, the Circle K, yeah. She works her late night shifts. Maybe we can go visit her if you really want. She's really pretty. She's got this long blonde hair.

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Autumn, Audible, ambience. If you like the treats part more than the tricks though, I know that not everybody can do the horror or the scary spooky stories on Audible. That's fine. Audible has so many other genres and titles of audiobooks. I couldn't even name them all even if I wanted to. And that's not a figure of speech. I'm talking...

Literally, they have thousands of titles to choose from. Audible also offers podcasts like ours, guided wellness programs, theatrical performances, which one of our RMT members is obsessed with on Audible, comedy, and Audible originals. So if you want to switch up the cadence of a narrator or switch to a different type of storytelling than normal audio book,

Audible has you covered there too. My favorite Audible feature just in general is the customizable playback speed. It is a game changer for those commutes, getting ready, nighttime routines, and honestly cleaning out your closet. Audible members can keep one title a month to keep from the entire catalog. New members can try Audible now free for 30 days. Visit audible.com slash rotten or text rotten to 500-500. That's audible.com slash rotten or text rotten to 500-500 to try Audible free for 30 days.

Yes.

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When Terry was younger, she was working at a place called The Key Club. And this is... We're getting to that part, right? Which is a bar that's known for its sex workers and super easy access to drugs. Like, it's the type of place where you walk into the bathroom and someone has a gram of cocaine just ready for you. Ready to go on a silver platter. That's it. It obviously wasn't the safest place for a young woman to be working. But when Terry started working there, she liked it. She liked the atmosphere. I mean, it's hard work. It's rough. But most of the guys are polite. Yeah, I mean...

you get the occasional horrible client here and there, but overall great people. She's pretty good at telling which ones are going to give her a hard time. So she felt like, you know, she's getting the hang, you know, getting the ropes of her job. So when Norby Dees walks in, she knew he was going to be rough on them.

He literally walked into the place and started arguing with one of the dancers right off the bat. Like, what the heck, sir? Sit down. And as he's yelling, he's getting closer and closer to the dancer. And he finally just slaps the girl across the face. Terry's not having it. She's witnessing this. She's like, that's my coworker. So she jumps in between them and she tells the dancer, run to the dressing room. I'll take care of this guy. And Terry, this little girl, she looks straight into this guy's eyes and says,

Does that make you feel like a big, tough man? And she scoffs, does a 180, probably slapping him with her long blonde hair and starts walking away. Now, Norby is not going to be having this. He grabs a pool cue stick, swings it and boom, it breaks on Terry's back. Now, how would most people react? Listen, I'd go running for the hills. I wouldn't even look back. Terry froze.

And then it registered in her head that he had just broken a pool stick on her back. That's really strong force. So she slowly turns around, looks him in the face and starts yelling.

Have you lost your fucking mind? She bent over, picked up the broken cue stick and in a rage, jumped on top of Norby D's, starts hitting him over and over and over again. The jagged end, the broken part of the stick was literally stabbing him. He was bleeding from his head to his chest, but Terry couldn't stop. She wouldn't stop. Even when a crowd around them formed, she couldn't stop. She hit him again and again.

Nobody attempted to pull her off of him. They just stood watching in horror. Some people were watching in awe. The dancer that Terry was protecting felt a twinge of like, oh shoot, I gotta back my girl up. So she ran to get a knife and proceeded to start stabbing the crap out of Norby. The two of them went at him and eventually someone called the police, but only after Norby was dead. The girls were arrested. One of the officers said to the girls, thank you. He was a pain in the ass.

Norby was one of those biker gang dudes and he was always in trouble with the law. A total pain in the ass to the police. So they thanked the girls for killing him.

They spent the night in prison and they were released on, you know, they just wrote a report of self-defense. What? Yeah. That's pretty wild. Terry had gotten a picture of Norby D's bleeding on the floor of the nightclub. I don't know how either somebody took the picture while it was happening. Maybe it was from the police report, but Terry had it and she kept it in her wallet. She carried it with her for the next 20 years. The picture of the man that she killed bleeding out on the floor in her wallet.

The sentiment for her was that it was her reminder that she could never let another man mistreat her. So Terry leaves the club. You know, it's kind of hard to go back to the same workplace after you murdered someone in front of your bosses and your co-workers. So she ends up leaving. She gets married, has a couple kids, gets a divorce. Then she moves on to another man, a Middle Eastern man. And she said her whole life changed completely.

She was introduced to a whole new culture. She even moved to Kuwait for a while. And at this point, she was so deeply immersed in her husband's culture. She was even the president of the local American Palestinian Arab Corporation, AIPAC. And everyone really admired the couple. I mean, it's really cute. Terry is embracing his way of life, his religion and everything. But in private, they weren't getting along well.

According to Terry, her husband got violent on a few occasions. And one night she was fed up. Terry seems kind of scary to me, if I'm going to be honest with you. But like this part, I agree better than the killing the man. Right. So he comes into the kitchen one night and he put his fist up, threatening to punch her. And she calmly looks at him and says, don't do it. And he doesn't listen. So he hits her.

Terry was in the kitchen, so she grabs the meat cleaver and slices her husband's arm open from the top to bottom. He was so shocked. The man was too stunned to speak. He was bleeding all over the floor. I mean, how could his wife do such a thing to him?

Terry looked at him and said, well, I told you not to do it. So this one, okay, like the murder one, I can't really justify all the way, legally speaking, like the grounds for self-defense were pretty shaky. Was the guy a horrible person? Absolutely. Did he deserve to get beat? Absolutely, right? But I just don't want to be, I don't want to be sexist. I feel like maybe if the roles were switched, would I have a different opinion? I don't know.

There's a lot of nuance to that story. However, this one, I'm like, you go, girl. Good on you. Get that meat cleaver. Like, that was bad. So anyways, Terry files for divorce and she's over it. She's really over men at this point. Like, she just wanted to be by herself with her cats. It's a comfortable life.

So when her friend walks into the Circle K with a man in tow, Terry is rolling her eyes. Sean, this is Terry. Terry, this is Sean. You guys will have to get to know each other. I'm going to leave because you guys have so much in common. I think you'll hit it off. Terry leans over the counter. Sharon, get him out of here. Sharon leans in.

No. And she leaves, leaving Sean behind. I mean, it's clear that Terry's uncomfortable, but at least the guy's not bad looking. Sure, he's only 5'7", but height is just a number to Terry. So they start talking and talking. And he stayed there for hours just talking to her. They only stopped when the occasional customer walked in. They really did have a lot in common. They liked the same movies, the same music. They both knew every single episode of Star Trek that had ever aired.

And when Sean asked her out, Terry said yes. I mean, how could she not? Besides, he was different from the other guys she had met. He seemed like the type that they'd be friends first and then dating second. It's like when you marry your best friend, you know? So they start dating and very early on, they get into this huge fight and they're screaming, they're hollering. Maybe Sean's howling. I don't know. Terry reaches over and slaps him hard across the face.

And she's waiting. Okay, she's bracing for impact. And Sean looks at her and he's stunned. He clenches his fists, stares straight into her eyes. And then he stomps his feet. And now there's tears streaming down his cheeks. And he says, girls don't hit boys and boys don't hit girls. It's not how it works. And he storms out of there.

I mean, Terry was shocked. Yeah, she was definitely shocked because like nobody, obviously he shouldn't hit her, but it was a very, it was almost like a resorting back to like childhood type situation. It wasn't a very like, why did you hit me? That is not okay. Don't ever do that again. It was a very like, that's not how he's supposed to be. So he storms out of there and,

was happy it was a test he passed she felt like okay for sure now this guy i can trust him he's never going to hurt me he's never gonna lay a finger on me so she runs after him apologizes apologizes and promises i'll never do it again

And the two of them, they fell madly in love. Sean invited her over to his place or should I say his mummy's place? And Terry was so stunned. She was a pretty neat person. And seeing this guy's room, I mean, it's clear that he did not know the definition of cleaning. There were moldy newspapers from that hurricane years ago.

There were moldy books. Terry was so disgusted, she started cleaning up the space. And Sean got so mad, like, no, no, no. For God's sake, don't get rid of those books. Those are my mom's books. So she tried to clean the books of mold and return them to the shelves. She couldn't help but wonder, am I dating a mama's boy? I mean, it sounds like Sean, this full-grown man, is scared of his own mother. She was like, no, no, no.

She later found out that maybe it's because his mom literally spoils him, gave him everything he wanted. They didn't talk much, but she would always send him money and it started to bother Terry. She hated seeing Sean being able-bodied, sitting in front of a computer all day, like wasting his life away. He was lazy and he drank a lot, like a lot.

But at least when he drank, he was affectionate and kind, unlike the other guys that she had dated. He wasn't violent, and he always called her honey bunny. I mean, the bar is set pretty low. It's so low, in fact, that Satan himself could use it to play limbo. But here we are. Terry loved Sean. She cooked for him. They watched movies together. She even got him a job at the Circle K convenience store. Their sex life was literally non-existent.

Sean never initiated anything. One night, Terry decides it's time. It's time to get them juices flowing, the blood pumping. So she starts foreplay in the kitchen. She cooks up his favorite meal of lasagna. And then after dinner, she held his hand, guided him into the bedroom. And she said it was a little strange. You know, he was nervous.

It's like he wasn't sure if he knew what to do. I thought he was a virgin, but I later found out that he wasn't. I think he had sex with like one girl before me. So Terry starts showing him what to do, but he's still super nervous about the whole thing. And it was just so awkward. I mean, most couples in relationships like this, they would still try, right? Try to make it better. Maybe have an open line of communication, but not them. They would only have sex two to three times a

Not a week, not a month, not a year, but in their entire 10 year relationship. Yeah. 10 years, a full decade. And by the way, there's nothing wrong with asexuality. It's just the fact that this wasn't that like it really bothered Terry too, that Sean wasn't sexually interested in her. There was just no open dialogue about it. Whenever she questioned him, he would just say, I'm just not that interested in sex. But is it something wrong with me? It's not you.

Like, am I too fat or something? No, I just don't really like it. So after a while, you know, she was confused, right?

But I mean, it can't be the worst thing in the world, right? Sean's still affectionate. He would still hug her while she did the dishes. He always told her that he loved her. I mean, that's enough, right? That's love. It wasn't until she moved in with him that she found the truth. He wasn't having sex with her because he was addicted to porn heavily. She would find balled up shirts in the corner of the bed to find out that he was masturbating while she was at work. Sometimes Terry would find a quote stained shirt. She would sneak up on him while he was on the computer and just throw it over his head. He

He would duck and grin, knowing that he'd been caught red-handed, and Terry would rub the shirt over his head before throwing it into the laundry machine.

What's interesting is that he tried his best to hide the porn addiction from Terry. So he worked from like 3 p.m. to like 7 a.m. or 7 p.m. Terry worked the night shift from like 8 p.m. to 3 a.m. So during the night when she was at work, that's when he would indulge in his little porn addiction. Right. But when he was caught, he wasn't particularly embarrassed. He didn't really seem to care. Terry did not think it was cute or funny, though. She asked her mom for advice. Mom, is this normal? I mean, Terry, I don't know.

What gets them off is what gets them off. It's got nothing to do with you, right? It just bothers me. I feel like there's...

There must have been something in his childhood that made him this way, right? Like that doesn't make any sense. I mean, I did notice that he just hates anybody who's gay. Like he just has this huge homophobia and he goes above and beyond to let everybody know that he's straight. And you don't think that's weird, mom? I even asked him, did something happen to you to make you not like women? And he said, no, no, no, I like women. Why would you even say that?

Eventually Terry gave up and sex just became a non-issue in their relationship. He only went to work because it's something that Terry made him do. He said it was out of respect for her that he went to work and during her night shifts, like I said, he would engage in his porn addictions. At some point, he runs out of stimulating videos. So he's searching around, looking for new ones, and he comes across a website.

with pictures of women posed in various positions, typically naked, and he was intrigued. It wasn't a video, but he was really into it. He was into these photos. He loved that in every single picture, all the women, they were dead. Oh my God. He was so excited that when Terry got home, he showed her the pictures, expecting a reaction, and she said, Ew, that's so gross. Where did you even find those?

And Sean giggled and he continued to look at these freaking pictures. She was nervous about this, but she still stuck by him. She said, you know, Sean is sweet.

He even cares for my kids and he tries to spend the holidays with him. I mean, everybody has their quirks, right? Sean is just quirky. He likes weird things on the internet. But if I find a new man, he's going to have quirks too. And those quirks are probably going to be a lot more violent. So I'm going to stick with Sean. Terry had no idea that all of this went far, far beyond porn.

Sean would drive through the streets of Baton Rouge at night while she was at work looking for sex workers. He liked them small, the ones that could be easily overpowered, which means that they'd have to be very, very, very, very petite because Sean never worked out, really ever had any muscles. He truly hated any form of labor, especially manual labor. So his vision was to not just get a petite girl, but to do whatever he wanted to them sexually and

And pose them like the dead girls he saw online. And the only way to do that, he felt in a way that made sense, in a way that was very, very authentic to what he saw, was to make sure that they were dead. That's what he was aiming to do. And when he found her, he would kill her. And this wouldn't be his first time.

He'd killed a woman before he met Terry. And he thought that he was over it. Terry was making him so happy that for the next five years, his life was so good, he didn't kill. And don't get him wrong, though. It's like he needed that thrill again. So January 4th, he spots his second victim, Catherine Hall.

She was a cocaine addict who had resorted to sex work to support her addiction. And she was only 30 years old. She was really petite. She started the day like any other, just walking up and down the streets in the area, which by the way, she knew the area really well. She also knew how to spot a creep. She wanted to keep herself safe. She was one of those girls that was on top of it.

So when she sees this guy literally hanging out of his window, flashing a $20 bill at her, she took one look at him and deemed him safe. He just had this like,

Nice guy, overly goofy grin. He looked overly harmless. He almost looked like this was his first time doing it. Nervous, like that nervous, innocent, but trying to play it cool type of energy. She gets into the car and he's really nice. He turns on the radio and he asks, well, can I get oral sex?

Sure. So he picks a little spot in a deserted field and they get straight to business. Catherine thought that this would be a very quick and easy job. She leaned down. As she's going down, he had pulled out a zip tie, but it was too late.

Before she could even run out of the car, he had it wrapped around her neck. He pulled it tight and Catherine starts fighting for her life. I mean, she's desperate. She's reaching for the door handle. And when she got it to open, she used her whole body weight. She used all of her might and leveraged herself and flung her body out of the car. She's screaming as she's running down the deserted field, just hoping, praying that somebody's going to hear her and somebody's going to help her.

But nobody did. Sean catches up to her and he throws her onto the ground. And he starts punching her, stabbing her. And he was just so angry. Catherine kept fighting as hard as she could. And he just wanted to overpower her. He grabbed his knife and cut her 16 times. The knife even cut through her left eye, through her breast, her stomach, her genitals. And he made one final slash across her throat to ensure that she was dead.

So now that he's satisfied, he wipes his face of sweat. He tears off her clothes and slowly in this deserted field, he felt like he didn't have to worry about anybody coming to see him. It was dark. He felt like he was alone. So he took his time. He started carving her up.

So he dug the blade of the knife into her arm near her shoulder and pulled it really hard to her wrist. So with this one motion, he had sliced her entire arm down to her hand. He slashed a circle around her right breast, but not enough to detach it. And then around the left, he stabbed her genitals eight times and her stomach. He cut off one of her very thin eyelids. And then it was time to flip her over. He started digging into her butt cheek with the knife and

tearing up all the skin all the way down to the knees he had split her her calf open and once he felt satisfied with his work and only when he felt satisfied with his work he carried her mutilated body back to his car why did he do this that's what he got off on he loved seeing pictures of mutilated bodies severed arms he loved seeing women who were laying there with cuts all over them he had found these online on the internet and he just wanted to recreate it for himself

He places Catherine's body in the front seat, puts the seatbelt on over her. And now I don't know how isolated this area is, but it must have been really, really empty because what he does next is really ballsy. I mean, I hate saying that word because it sounds like a compliment. And when I mean it, that's not what I mean. I'm not in any way complimenting this guy. This guy is evil. But he ends up driving to a car wash and he starts washing off the blood on the seats and

And when it got to the passenger side where Catherine's sitting, he took her out of the car, slumped her body next to the car in the open in the middle of this car wash, and he scrubbed the passenger side. He said he did feel a little bit of anxiety and stress. Of course he did. He's human, right? No. He said the feeling of regret and stress was because he should have let her finish the blowjob before he killed her. That's what he was thinking about as he washed his car,

and then put her body back, drove her to the outskirts of town, and disposed of her body in a field.

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when he had murdered a woman by the name of Ann Bryan. So this is Sean's first victim. Now, Ann was one of those people that never gave up. She was born without a right hand. She still graduated high school early, second in her entire class at only 16 years old. At the young age of 16, she went to LSU, where she experienced being homesick for the first time ever, and it was traumatizing. She hated it. She was crying out on the sidewalk one day, and the dean happened to pass. He said, what's wrong? He just...

I just want to go home. I miss my family. And so the dean looked around and he spotted another student. Hey, can you come over here? What's your name, son? William? All right. Well, young man, why don't you walk Anne home and try to cheer her up, okay? I don't know. I think that's how deans talk.

Um, sure. William starts walking her back to the dorms and the whole time he's trying to crack jokes, trying to get her to smile. And when Anne went back to her dorm room, she cried for the second time that night because she really liked William and she felt there's no way, no way that she would ever have a shot with someone like him. Who would like a girl with just one hand? And of course, she was wrong. The next morning, William was waiting for her to walk her to her classes and again and again and...

And they finally asked each other out. They went on a couple dates and they got married. They had a few kids together. Both of them got really good jobs. I mean, their life was as perfect as it gets. So in the sick way that life works, William had suffered a stroke. This is 10 years into their perfect life together. And after this stroke, he was incapable of caring for himself. So for the next 13 years, Anne would give up everything to take care of her husband, to comfort the man that she loved. She kept up the household. She's struggling to pay the bills. She did it all.

But at the end of those 13 years, it didn't matter how hard she tried because William passed away. So she tries to live her life to the fullest for the rest of her kids.

They encouraged her to have fun, you know? And when Anne was struggling to like even open something, her kids would look at her and giggle because she was always the one that taught them, never let your shortcomings get to you. And they would giggle and they would say, mom, what's wrong with you? You act like you only have one hand or something. And they would all burst out laughing. And one of the kids would walk over, help their mom. I mean, they had such a good relationship, which is why by the time that Anne was 77, she had a really full life.

She didn't act her age. She was independent. She acted youthful. And all of that was shattered when she broke her left shoulder. This rendered her left arm completely useless, including her left hand. And it was devastating. This is the arm that she relied on for everything. This meant that she couldn't even take care of herself. This was her worst nightmare.

So her kids, they tried to check her into the best of the best care place. It was called St. James Place and it was this luxurious senior home. Like it had manicured lawns, attractive apartments. So think of it as like a massive apartment complex. But everyone in there is a senior and it's filled with nurses and staff. So Anne goes there and for five years she tries to make the best of it. But then she breaks her rib cage. It was a car accident.

So when she gets back to her room after the hospital, she's thinking, okay, well, I'm going to leave my door open tonight, like unlocked because I mean, it's one of those apartments where, yeah, it's like an apartment, but not really because you know, everybody here, you guys do group activities together. All the seniors were leaving their apartment doors open. So I mean, the exterior doors were always locked and you needed key passes and the nurses and they would knock on the door. The housekeepers would knock on the door and then imagine you're 80 with broken ribs. Like you really want to get up out of bed. Like how long is that going to take? That's going to take forever. And

And especially, she had just gotten out of the hospital. The staff were going to be checking up on her all night. So she left the door unlocked and went to sleep. And at 3 a.m., she wakes up to a noise. Probably a nurse coming to check up on her. And she laid there and waiting and laid there some more. And then she opened her eyes.

She sees a man looming over her, just standing, staring at her. It just felt so wrong. Like it wasn't a male nurse that was new. It wasn't a male staffer. She knew it. Like something was wrong. This man did not belong in this bedroom. It just, his whole presence felt wrong. And then he touched her and she screamed.

She screamed louder when he jumped on her and tore off her clothes, but nobody could hear her. He had closed the door and the walls between the apartment units were really thick. So she screamed again and again and her hands and her feet were trying to fight back, but she just had, she seen, she saw the steel blade of the knife and then she felt it. He was stabbing her. I mean, she was completely defenseless. He got angrier and angrier and stabbed her harder and harder and then he sliced her throat with so much force that he almost decapitated her.

Thankfully, we do know that Anne probably died very early on during this attack. But Sean wasn't done. He kept going and he stabbed her over and over and over again, enjoying the experience. It was like he's relishing in it. He knew that she was dead, but he didn't care. He cut her stomach till her intestines spilled out. He slashed her right breast till it was attached only by a few shreds of skin. He slashed her genitals, her face, her breasts. He tore open her pink nightgown and then he left.

The horrified staff members would find Anne's body the next morning and for 10 years, nobody would have any answers to why anybody would want to do this to someone in a senior care facility, especially someone as sweet as Anne. Those were his first and second victims and Sean would only get worse in his brutality. He just had these sick fantasies that he wanted to live out. So Hardy Schmidt was 54, but she looked a lot younger.

Hardy had lived a pretty privileged life. She came from a well-to-do family in Baton Rouge. She had married an attorney, had three kids. She was a stay-at-home mom. And the one thing that she really attributed to keeping her sane were her morning runs. Without it, life would have been, wow, she would have hated it. She loved running. She was good at it too. She was in the Boston Marathon, did amazing.

The feeling of being out there before people were starting to wake up, running just helped her maintain this healthier mind, healthier body. She loved every part of it. If you saw Hardy running down from a distance, you'd probably assume that she's in her young 20s. That's how fit she was.

And for that reason, and for the fact that predators exist, Hardy was super careful when she was out and running. Sure, she only ran in daylight, you know, or like right before daylight. She also knew the schedule. She ran in well-traveled upper class areas, never isolated paths, residential streets. She knew the safest time was when people started getting out of beds, opening their shades, getting ready to go to work, putting the coffee in the pot, etc.

It's just a lot of action. Cars are going to be pulling out of the driveway. School buses are going to be around. Kids are going to be awake. She would run at that time.

And her neighborhood was, like I said, a nice upper middle class area. She knew exactly what not to wear. She never wore earbuds while she was running. She did everything right. And she knew that all these extra safety precautions were great, but probably useless because her neighbors were pretty nosy and they all looked out for one another. She would be safe. I don't think she or anybody else would have ever predicted that one day she'd be hit by a Ford.

You see, Sean had been watching Hardy and he had seen her a while back and he'd been driving around the area just hoping to get another glimpse of her. She was beautiful. That's what he thought to himself. And the only way to do it was now. And he had to hit her with his Ford. This one was a little bit different. He couldn't. There was no way that she would stop and talk to him. Even if he rolled his window down, he would have to do it with force.

He hit her with his car and sent her flying into a nearby ditch. He jumped out the driver's side, ran up to her, pulled a zip tie around her neck till she passed out. She didn't even have the chance to scream. And when she stopped moving, he picked up her limp body and put her inside the car.

Nobody saw a single thing. He drove to an empty field around 5.30 a.m. He, being as gentle as ever, placed her body down and started taking her clothes off. This is how he said it. He was being gentle. He rubbed himself on all parts of her and participated in necrophilia. When he was done, he threw her naked body into the trunk of his car. And he's thinking, fuck, I gotta hurry. I gotta pick up Terry from work. Terry gets into the car. Oh, God, what's that smell?

Oh, I ran over a squirrel yesterday. It's probably stuck to the tire or something. I'll go get a car wash. I'll drop you off and go get a car wash and get rid of it. Oh, yeah, you better. It stinks a lot in here. It's going to get worse. Don't worry, honey bunny. I'll take care of it. He dropped her off and instead of going to a car wash, he drove down the highway to New Orleans, drove into a rural area and dumped her body near the swamps.

When he finally got home after the very long day, he just couldn't help himself. He got in front of his little computer, turned on a video, and masturbated. At that point, Sean's fantasies were only getting darker and darker. He couldn't stop thinking about dismemberment. It was the only thing on his mind. Just the thought of a woman's severed leg or an arm was enough to get him excited. His urges were consuming him day in and day out. He salivated about his fantasies.

Whenever Terry was at work, he would drive around looking for another perfect victim. He typically chose a small community outside of Baton Rouge that had a mainly black population because it felt like it was easier to get away with crime over there. And probably if his victims were black, because likely there would be less police efforts in finding them. Sometimes it wasn't even just about the kill. He would taunt victims. He would, you know, talk to random sex workers, chat them up, feeling like he's holding their life in his hands. Does he kill her?

Is it this one or is it the next one? She'll never know. She has no idea that her life is in my hands right now. He typically wanted girls to be his age. So in their late 20s or late 30s, sometimes older, he wanted someone who was someone that he would genuinely be attracted to, someone that he would genuinely want to date, someone who was petite. He didn't like to fight. He was a very sensitive guy, you know, but he did have a weak spot for nice legs. That was his kryptonite. That's what he liked most about Joyce.

And that's why he stopped his car to ask if he could buy her services. So they agree on $10 for a blowjob. And when she gets into the car, he hands her the money. Now, Sean was not as eager as he was the first time. He felt like he could, you know, take his time with it. Besides, if it were up to him, he wanted to know a lot about his victims. That was his thing. He liked to know about his victims before he killed them. He would ask about what she liked to do. What's her free time hobby? Does she have kids? What's her dream in life?

Sean listened and soaked it all in, all the while driving her straight into the rural areas filled with sugar canes, which you can imagine is terrifying. I mean, I think it's almost as terrifying as like corn farms. These sugar canes can grow to be 10 to 24 feet tall. You cannot see through it. Nobody can see you.

It's a horror movie, really. So Joyce gets out to use the restroom in the middle of a sugar cane field. And it was the perfect time for Sean. He comes up behind her, wraps a zip tie around her neck, and Joyce immediately starts kicking and fighting. And he says, shh, be still, be still. And after a few minutes, she was dead and secured in the passenger seat. And he started driving back home.

Now, they start driving back to Sean's house. And yeah, he was taking Joyce's body back to his house now, the one that he shared with Terry. And as he's driving, Joyce's body slumped over and her head fell into his lap. And he said that he couldn't help but smile. He was just in a good mood. He had some time and he was really happy about it. He even later wrote a letter from prison about what he had done with Joyce's body. And this is what it said. I laid her down in the kitchen by the bar in the sink.

and I stroked her body, the usual sick playing with her. She had beautiful legs. I wanted to keep those legs.

I used a sharp knife to cut through the muscle of the leg, but it took a while to get through it. I think I cut too low. I finally got it off with a hacksaw and I went for the next leg. The blade snapped on me when I was about halfway through the femur. I remember trying to get her arm off next, but there was a lot of blood. I had to sop it up with paper towels, packing paper, which is very absorbent, and water.

I used one of Terry's knives, a fillet knife that's razor sharp. You gotta be careful with handling it, but I tried to get the arm at the elbow. Then the wrist. Things were popping out of the joints, but I couldn't get it off. Even though I twisted it real good, it would not come off. At that point, I pretty much went in for the head. The knife went through just like that. It was like cutting butter. With Mrs. Bryan, I couldn't get through. When they're alive, the muscles in the neck, they make it harder.

There was a lot of blood though, don't get me wrong. So I washed her head in the sink and I inserted my penis into her throat. So not the mouth, but the decapitated head part. And he said, I don't know if it was her spinal cord or something, but it pricked my scrotum and it was just really uncomfortable. So I guess I got what I deserved. It wasn't even a sex thing. It was more of a mind thing. It was more just to see what it was like. I didn't, you know, get off on it. Then I put my penis in her mouth.

And after that, I picked up her leg, holding it with the foot close to my face, severed end down, and she just had lovely legs, just like Terry. Now, this is the part that I just, I don't even know what to say.

So Sean said he was caught up in the moment and he had to reach for his knife. And he performed what he later called a nippleectomy on Joyce. First, he sliced off one nipple, then the other, and he held the severed nipple in his hand, studying it. He had spent years researching dead bodies, sadistic acts, serial killers, everything you could imagine. But this moment, this moment was beyond anything he had ever read about. And he just felt like he had to seize the moment. He put the nipples in his mouth and

And he ate them. And now he was done. He put Joyce's body in the large garbage bag and put the severed leg in another bag and he had to force her into this big packing box and he started scrubbing the floors and that's the only time that Sean ever cleaned his house was to erase the evidence of a gruesome murder.

Sean carried the box, placed it into the back of his car, like the back seat, not even the trunk, the back seat. And at this point, body parts were sticking out of the box. He had shoved other boxes and bags around to, you know, hide the sticking parts out. And then he picked up Terry just like that with a body in the back seat with body parts sticking out. And he said he wasn't anxious at all. He said he was giddy.

Excitement! Who else could say that they picked up the love of their life with body parts right in the backseat? That feeling? That feeling of pure power? He loved every single second of it. He even kissed her. Hey, honey bunny. How was work? He smiled after he kissed her because he knew that he could still taste a bit of Joyce's flesh in his mouth. Meanwhile, Terry smiled because she thought, Sean is just always so sweet. But honey, I have to drop you off at home first and run some errands.

So Terry's like, okay. She knocks out after her night shift and Sean drove around searching for the perfect place to dump Joyce's body. He settled on near a local river. He threw her over the embankment and he said, and I quote, I got the box out of the back and slung her leg down first. Then I slung her head down. It went bloop, bloop, bloop all the way down. The torso was last because that, well, that was harder.

So without the box, he threw her into a river. Joyce's body was found two months later, and the police decided to print flyers with her face all over it to get any information to catch her killer. Ironically enough, the Louisiana State Attorney General's office, they were having problems with their copy machine. And they called in a maintenance company called Shamrock Office Supply to get someone out to fix their copy machine. And they sent Sean Gillis.

Yeah, that's where he was working now. It didn't take Sean long to fix this copy machine. I mean, it was a pretty easy fix, but he needed to do a test run. So he starts looking around for some random pieces of paper to copy and it caught his eye. The poster of Joyce Williams. So he takes it and like you're thinking, oh, is he nervous? No, he wasn't nervous. Even

Even though he's in the attorney general's office. In fact, he was filled with glee. With every new copy that was spit out by the copy machine, he felt like he was reliving his entire day of pleasure with her. It was... He's printing the missing person's report? Oh my gosh. He wanted to close his eyes and think about that day. No one in the office thought it was odd that Sean was using the poster of a murder victim to test the machine. Or...

or that he made more than 200 copies at this point to, quote, test the machine. No one even noticed as he lovingly ran his fingers over the picture of Joyce. The police were too busy with all the false leads that they were getting. I mean, it felt like their investigation was going in circles and in circles. After only two months since Joyce, his cool-off period was getting shorter and shorter. Sean wanted to feel the thrill again. This time he chose 52-year-old Lillian Robinson.

He chose her because she looked different. Her face was soft and her eyes were gentle. It didn't look like she was made for the harsh life of being a sex worker. Lillian gets into his car and within minutes she had a zip tie around her neck. It's like he had this routine now. He drove back to his house, stripped her naked, and he looked at the clock and he didn't have enough time to do the same thing to Lillian as he did with Joyce.

He had to pick up Terry. So it had to be a quicker process. He spent the next hour just playing with Lillian's corpse, squeezing her breasts, rubbing her legs, just necrophilia. All the while, just wishing he had more time. He wanted to cut her up. He wanted to make incisions. It was just all over too soon.

So he put her body into his car, drove to the largest swamp in the US. I mean, the water was pretty much black at this point due to the lack of aeration, and it was the perfect place to hide a body. It was infested with alligators, too. He threw Lillian into the swamps, and then he moved on to his next victim. He was driving to a town nearby when he spotted 38-year-old Marilyn Nevels walking down the street. He wasn't planning on killing anyone that day, but as he passed Marilyn, they had made eye contact, and there was just like this, this

"'There's fire inside of him now.' He stopped at the light, rolled down the window, and smiled at her.

The two of them agreed on $10 for a blowjob, and he drove to this empty field nearby, and he handed her the money, and this time he let her finish before he brought out the zip tie. Marilyn fought and fought. She ended up kicking the windshield, breaking it on one side. This caused enough distraction for her to open the car door and run as fast as she could, but Sean was right behind her with a metal bar, and he hit her on the back of the head over and over until she died. He dragged her body back to his car,

And he said, oh shit, I almost forgot. And he reached into her pocket and took out the $10 he had paid her earlier. And he even later told the police. It wasn't a particularly bad blowjob. He stopped at a car wash just as he did with Catherine Hall and he left Marilyn's corpse on the ground in plain sight as he rinsed off his floorboards. He later told the police really cold.

I just used as many quarters as it took to get the red out of my car. He put it in the trunk and he stopped at a gas station. And when he went inside, the gas station looked at him and the attendant was like, whoa, what happened to you? You got into a fight? Did you at least get the upper hand, man? The cashier was joking and Sean looked at him and said, you should see the other guy.

So Sean drives back home, and he's just too excited. He tarries at work. He had a few hours left to spend with his latest victim, and he couldn't wait. He puts Marilyn's body on the kitchen floor, and he starts taking off her clothes. He tries to shower with her, but she was... I mean, she's very petite, but...

She was dead, so the weight was very heavy. Like, I'm not trying to say she was heavy. You get what I'm saying. And he gave up, and he was so annoyed that he couldn't prop her up in the shower, and he had wasted all this time. And it was already time to pick up Terry, so he's frustrated. He had to hurry back, and he rushed up, put her body in a Xerox paper box, and put her into the car.

He drove to the local river and just left her body at the top of the embankment. He didn't dump her? No, he couldn't get through to the river this time. He said there was too much like brush. So he just left her up there. This was not far from where Joyce Williams was dumped like 10 months prior. Sean was proud. I mean, he had picked the perfect victim. Even when Marilyn was found, nobody had filed a missing persons report on her. This is what he had to say about how he chose his victims.

I act like I'm literally trying to pick them up on a real date. The sex workers, they loved me. I treated them like women, like ladies. Do you understand? That was the smoothness, I guess, to where some of them, you know, they couldn't wait to get in my car. And the money, I mean, although that was probably the immediate motivating factor for them, being in my car was the money, but they were willing to ride with me, to be with me.

So this guy thinks he's like, he's something. Now let's talk about the Baton Rouge serial killer. No, not Sean. During this period, there was another serial killer active in Baton Rouge. He was known as the Baton Rouge killer. Sean, the one that we're talking about, technically he was later known as the other Baton Rouge killer.

which I'm really like I like the name more than the creepy names like the night stalker because it just like throws it in his face you're not special Sean which is exactly what he wants because he's a power tripping egomaniac but it's part of the reason that the police took so long to catch Sean I mean at first they took too long to even connect all the murders together then they thought that they would because they thought each murder was an isolated incident then when

Then when they finally tied it all together, they had a hard time realizing that there was more than one active serial killer operating in the area. So all of this let Sean claim many more victims.

Johnny May was one of them. She was a 45-year-old mom of three, and she was really trying. She had just, she was dealing with a lot of depression, anxiety. She had kids, and she was trying her best looking for jobs. And she had heard from a friend that a man named Sean Gillis was looking for someone to clean his home. So she meets up with him, and instantly they hit it off. Johnny May did clean his house a few times, but they were more like friends. They actually maintained a really good relationship for 10 years before Sean killed her.

What? So Sean was out searching for another victim one night, and he couldn't find the perfect one. So that's when he spots his good friend, Johnny May, who had also been working as a sex worker on the side, and he said, Hey! Hop in, Johnny! How are you? Good. But Sean knew she wasn't good. She was missing most of her teeth at this point. She looked like she was wasting away. You're back on drugs, aren't you? Johnny nodded.

They drove around and Sean was watching her closely and he didn't know at first if he was going to do something to her, but the more that he looked at her, she looked kind of tired to the point where he said she looked dead. And that just lit a fire. It didn't matter that they had been friends for over 10 years. He drove her behind a building, surrounded by trees, pulled her out of the car and started beating her. He didn't stop until he knew that she was dead. He took all of her clothes and then he reached for his knife. He started a wound in her leg, sliced open,

all the way down. He loved the slight resistance as it sliced through the muscle, that's what he said. He pulled down till the leg ripped open. He cut her butt area, the back of the right leg. He cut her over and over, feeling nothing but pure pleasure. He wanted to see all the muscles and the veins and the tissues that were in the legs. He felt like he was in some anatomy class. He started slicing through her wrist till he held her detached hand in his, and he loved the sound of the bones snapping.

So now with both of Johnny May's detached hands, he puts them in a Ziploc bag and put her back into his car where he abandoned her at an embankment. He took out his camera and he started taking pictures of his friend's mutilated body. So he leaves her body and back in the car, he used her detached hands to touch himself. So not too long after, Sean felt the itch again and he went searching for his next victim.

Donna Bennett Johnston. She was also a mom and I think life just really got to her. Her relationships weren't going well. She started relying on crack cocaine. And by 2004, when Sean found her, she was in bad shape. Sean pulled up and gave his signature good guy grin. Donna got into the car with him and this time he wasn't in the mood for talking. But he was pleased. He could smell alcohol on her and he knew that this was going to be easy.

So he drove to a secluded area near a chemical plant, parked the car, killed her, started taking pictures of her, and then he put his hand into her mouth and pulled out her entire dental plate. So not even like her teeth, but imagine, you know, when you wear dentures, like think of it like that. And he noticed a tattoo on her right thigh. He grabbed his knife and cut the tattoo off her leg. He was going to be taking the tattoo as a trophy.

He sawed her arm off completely. He cut off her nipples, sliced off her breasts, and he said in that moment he felt the joy and possession of ownership of these intimate and feminine body parts. He couldn't stop himself from eating the body parts. He just simply had to taste them inside of himself. In that moment, the victim would become part of him. No one could ever take them away from him. He put the nipples in his mouth and ate them. He didn't particularly like the taste, but he wanted to savor the moment.

When he was done, he took 45 more photos of Donna's mutilated body, disposed of her body, and he tried to pose his victims with all of their butts positioned in the air. And in a final vicious act, he stomped on her back, leaving a bloody shoe print left on her back.

He drove home to shower and clean up. And now the discovery of Donna's body, the police were like, whoa, it's a little bit too similar to the, you know, the murders of Johnny May Williams and Catherine Hall. Guys, we might be looking at a different serial killer, a different Baton Rouge killer.

Three bodies had been cut up, left in remote areas, some dismembered. All three of them lived similar lifestyles. They had ligature marks around their necks. I mean, we might be onto something, guys. The police ran the DNA that were found at three crime scenes. Yeah, there was DNA.

And they were all the same. So they're like, oh, it's the same guy. The police were able to get tire marks from where Donna's body was left, and they were able to deduce the exact brand, model, and type of the tire that left those marks. Now they only had 60 names of people who would own a car like that. And number 26 on the list was Sean Gillis. An agent knocked on his door, asked for a DNA swabbing, and they asked, have you been up Ben Hur Road recently? Yeah, I grew up around that area. I'm often over there. Why?

Do you know a Donna Bennett Johnston? A who? Uh, no. What about a Catherine Hall? Do you know her? No, I don't know her. What about Johnny Mae Williams? Did you know her? Oh yeah, she's a friend of mine. She sometimes cleaned my house.

So the agents took his DNA swab. He consented to it. And they noticed that Sean was really comfortable answering these questions, but he had placed himself at the scene of a murder and admitted to knowing another victim. So they asked him to come down to the police station, and that's when his whole demeanor changed. He was no longer in a good mood. He was suddenly reserved. He was like, let's get this shit over with.

shit over with but they didn't get a confession and the DNA results would take a while so they sent him home and for the first night ever instead of watching porn he snuggled up with Terry she was shocked he never did this and while they slept in each other's arms the results came back Sean Gillis was a match and at 1am the police burst through the door and they filled the room they arrested both of them and Terry was confused like why are you guys doing this what's going on we're arresting him for murder

And Terry said in that moment she felt calm because she knew that they had the wrong person. I mean, you got the wrong guy. You guys are so bad at your job. Sean is a chicken. He's someone who runs away from conflict and trouble. Are you kidding me? So when they get to the station, Sean tries to ask for an attorney and they try to convince him not to. They said, come on, we just want to talk about your accomplishments.

How long have you known that this day was inevitable, right? You want to talk about it, don't you? Sean's ego won his common sense, and he spilled his guts for four days. For 40 hours, the agents listened to every little detail. There was no embarrassment, no remorse. He joked, he laughed. He laughed that Catherine's body was left next to a dead-end sign,

He explained how much easier it is to cut dead flesh since the muscles aren't working. He was proud of everything he had done. So he was thrown in prison for trial. And when they searched his house, they found, I mean, weapons, knives, hacksaws, condoms, pictures, zip ties, books on the hillside strangler, Silence of the Lambs, Son of Sam articles. His computer showed that he had an obsession with Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. He also had favorite porn stars and categorized...

Hundreds, if not thousands of porn videos into folders divided by race and other categories included old fucks, kinky, dead webs, fake dead, beheadings and hangings, various dead, best of snuff, and then one titled extra dead.

So Sean pled guilty to the murder of Joyce Williams, and in return, he got a life sentence. Then he was tried for the murder of Donna. Doctors came forward and said that he had schizoaffective disorder, which meant that Sean was flat. He was not happy, nor was he depressed. The doctor, whether this is true or he just wants to punch Sean in his ego, he said, you know, you're more depressed when you're more intelligent with this type of disorder.

And Sean is not depressed. So they're like, he's just flat. They suspected that Sean had an abnormal brain to begin with. And it probably only got worse with some sort of childhood brain injury.

They said, we've talked to Sean and Sean believes his brain is like a library operating system. He believes a worm has infiltrated it or a virus has infiltrated it and he has ants in his brain. And he said the government has found a way to teleport people to other geographic locations. Terry called bullshit. She even laughed at it. She said, Sean is messing with these guys. So what is Terry's reaction? She still like talked to him. She still sent him letters, but she moved on with another guy. I mean, I don't get it.

So with that, he was found guilty and sentenced to life, which shocked everybody because they were hoping for the death penalty.

He pled guilty to the murder of Marilyn Nevels the next year, and he was never tried or pled guilty for the murders of Anne Bryan, Hardy Mosley Schmidt, Lillian Robinson, Catherine Hall, and Johnny Mae Williams. They didn't want to spend more tax dollars onto the case. So now, Sean is 60, thriving in prison. He claims he found God, and he had this to say. Pray for peace. Pray that we may stop killing our brothers and sisters here and around the world.

And that is the story of the Baton Rouge cannibal. What are your thoughts on this case? Let me know. Terrifying. And the way that, listen, I got too many thoughts and you don't want to hear it because you didn't come here for my thoughts, but it's just so sick. And he really does look, I wouldn't say nice, but normal. He just looks so normal. So stay safe. And I will see you guys on Sunday for the mini-sode.